Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta.

The Government recognises those challenges referred to that are being faced by SMEs. That is why we have, since our inception as a government, put a range of supports in place to deal with Covid-19, supply change disruption, rising energy costs and Brexit.

The Government's White Paper on Enterprise, which we published in 2022, outlines how we will build the resilience and sustainability in our economy as we engage with the two dominant trends of the 21st century - decarbonisation and technological change.

Our Department funds Enterprise Ireland and the local enterprise offices to provide a range of help, advisory services and financial supports to SMEs. These include direct financial assistance through grants, loans and equity investments as well as market research, export development assistance, mentoring and funding for research and innovation.

It is important to emphasise that the challenges are faced by all businesses which is why we have taken steps to extend more support to the non-exporting locally-traded sector. We are currently rolling out the increased cost of business grant, which up to 129,000 businesses across the country can seek to benefit from. In the Deputy's county of Cork, more than 12,000 businesses are eligible to apply. As of this week, 2,500 of them can apply. I reiterate the Minister's call for businesses to engage with this and comment that this is an opportunity to assist with costs at present.

In addition to that, to assist businesses to be more sustainable, productive and efficient, we can focus on lean, green and digital products from the LEOs, which are 31 first-stop shop locally available to provide advice and guidance.

We have allocated an additional €9 million in this year's budget to LEOs to allow them to do that, and in particular to assist businesses in local towns and communities across the country.

We also have a range of products in the growth and sustainability loan scheme and the Ukraine credit guarantee scheme. Finally, we are developing a new national enterprise hub, which we will launch shortly, which will allow SMEs to identify specifically the supports that relevant to them. We know there is a myriad of supports and it can be hard to navigate them at times. This will assist them.

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